


How the Bear Tormented the Hawk

by Drunk_Scarran



Category: Deadpool (Comics), Deadpool - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bears, Broken Bones, Deaf Clint Barton, Friendship, Gen, Hawkguy, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Marvel Universe, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Rated for Deadpool's Language, SHIELD, Stalking, Tony Stark Is Not Helping, Unconsciousness, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:44:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2780375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drunk_Scarran/pseuds/Drunk_Scarran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started out as one of these very simple outdoorsy missions for Hawkeye, but someone decided to spike things up a little, setting in motion what would bring the archer’s misfortune.<br/>A little straightforward tale of bad luck, bears, and special silly surprises at the end</p><p>(Do I suck at summaries or what? Basically bits of Hurt Clint and let's-mock-poor-Hawkeye<br/>Also: a surprise that might be exploited further for fun)</p><p>Part 2 is up: more fun and more whumping ahead!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

How the Bear Tormented the Hawk

Part 1, chapter 1

 

Today’s mission had Clint located in the vicinity of what used to be a small hydroelectricity power station. It must have been the beating heart of the local economy for the first part of the last century, pumping vital power to a number of those typical North-East red brick industries.  
But now the factories were shut down, electricity was supplied by different means, the area was in a slow agony, and most of the dams that used to sit on the largest branch of the river were left to crumble in the plunge pools underneath its waterfalls. The local town nearly two miles away wasn’t going to be the focus of the real estate industry anytime soon; the facilities and infrastructures surrounding the power station were abandoned to a long decay as ghosts in the middle of an ever expanding forest.

Against all appearances, the place wasn’t entirely deserted and, as the saying goes: one man's trash is another man's treasure. To say the least, a small division of A.I.M. agents had inconspicuously taken over the station, using whatever was left behind, the remaining dam, and some of their own technology to relay power to a secret facility set downstream. In fact, a former brick factory with boarded up windows was hiding just another A.I.M lab and, although Clint hadn’t been briefed on every little classified detail, it was implied they were working on high tech robotics in there. 

It was no surprise for anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. and, not only were the local secret A.I.M operations quickly exposed, but a raid had already been conducted on site by some of director Fury’s men. Barely any shots were exchanged, and a handful of low level techs and goons were easily drawn out and arrested. The lab had been swiftly cleared of all equipment and technology, or so Intelligence believed right until one of the captive scientists went to pretend they had an even more secret lab hidden under the factory. A lab in which they kept a then newly transferred armour suit prototype supposedly copied from some of Tony Stark’s most brilliant work.  
Intelligence had doubts at first, but a second survey of the area uncovered the underground facility spoken of, along with pieces of a suit that resembled the Mark IX, protected behind what seemed like a force field. That alone got their attention.

This was where Hawkeye had a part: he and a few agents were to watch the perimeter while more S.H.I.E.L.D agents were sent at the factory to study the new discovery. Clint was tasked with watching over the first checkpoint on the road leading to the facilities from a distance; a low bridge running over one of the river’s downstream branches, half a mile from the lab. Since Tony Stark himself was to travel to the site and make sense of the Iron Man knock off locked underground, but mostly because the billionaire and his security detail were running late, Clint’s secondary task was to confirm Stark arrival in time.

So Hawkeye moved to what was to be his perch for this mission, the top right corner of steep and powerful cascade that poured its cold water in a pool 90 feet away from the checkpoint. He was to be alone in the wilderness, his position to be settled somewhere near the waterfall’s 30 foot drop or the surrounding precipice, standing above a large rocky pond of dark water.

The geology of the area near the river bank and the falls called for a number of hills that years of erosion turned into medium sized cliffs. Unstable cliffs with their steepest heights dotted with thujas, the partly exposed roots of the trees seemingly the only thing that anchored half of the ground in place. For it was made of patches of silt and sand, gravel and pebbles, and boulders of all size barely clumped together in a hard packed clay soil. The rain from the previous days turned a thin top layer of this clay into a treacherous and slippery muck, as if the rocks breaking away from the wall of the cliffs weren’t hazardous enough already.  
As for the flattest portions –the top of the cliffs and a few narrow plateaus held in place by the trees– birches, hawthorns, young maple and beech trees, and wildcherry and chokeberry trees were competing with pines, spruces, firs, and thujas for any free space to grow into. Thick shrubs matting the rare pieces of flat terrain –hey! Are those raspberries?!– were doing an excellent job hogging greedily any left-over bits of land and sunrays, sprouting around downed trees and sharp chunks of rock. Not much moss, but more or less decomposing wet leaves that last Fall left on the ground made up for it. 

As a result and from Clint’s exact location on the perimeter, the safest spots also had the worst view on the checkpoint bridge, while the best vantage points where the most suicidal places to stand on. And as for moving from one to another, the vegetation was of course making it a huge pain in the ass. 

Since it was just Clint’s luck, the raspberries were far from being ready for consumption yet, and the bushes they grew on had their fair share of mean little thorns scratching at any bit of his exposed skin. Trampling a few branches out of frustration didn’t make anything better either, and it sure wasn’t recommendable for someone supposed to stay out of sight for the length of the mission. 

Chances of falling off and breaking his neck or not, Hawkeye had a job to do and he intended to do it right. Reporting Tony’s arrival wasn’t the most part of it; hell, he couldn’t care less for the Goatee Diva’s antics. Only, if A.I.M. decided to go back for what was left behind in the labs, the archer was a great part of the first line of defense: people depended on him, as usual.

So the agent painstakingly made his way to the top of the cataract, approaching from a thin trail hugging the upstream part of the river. Once he was up there and close enough from the precipice, he carefully approached a break in the vegetation looking for a perfect spot. 

He found the closest thing to perfect he could get in his situation in the form of a short incline leading to one of these plateaus. An old thuja was sticking out of the cliff side, its roots and the soil they kept grafted to the hill forming a narrow ledge. The tree’s trunk coming horizontally from the ground and bending in a J toward the sky made for most of Clint’s cover, his perch half suspended in the air right above the drop. It was risky, but he couldn’t find a better compromise.  
If this dry piece of wood managed to supported his weight for the following hours and *not* send him barrelling down into the river, so the agent thought, he would owe Mother Nature one.

Though he was starting to think back on that one: the roar of the waterfall nearby as it was picked by his hearing aids was nearly overwhelming. The noise of all this water crashing on sharp rocks seemed to be efficiently erasing all other sounds of the forest around him.  
Irked, he adjusted down the aids so the noise would at least not slowly drill through his skull like Chinese water torture, making a mental note to glance back from times to times to make sure no one or no wild beast was sneaking on him.

Wary at the sudden thought –damn; are-there bears around here? – the archer took out his bow and expertly assembled it in a single swift motion. Squatted on the ledge, his back against the tree separating him from the drop, he pressed his body more firmly to the trunk to brace himself and carefully scan his surroundings.

 

He was just as suddenly more conscious of the arrows he had at the ready: they were recently approved prototypes, although not exactly approve by him; a fact he found a bit infuriating considering he was the one going to use them after all. To be fair, he might have not used them yet, but he saw them in action: Tony had shown him test footages as the special arrowheads were his creation after all. The tubular points would create a shockwave strong enough to knock a target flat on its back on impact and, unlike some of his trick arrows with similar effects, the new ones would not explode, thus being stealthier yet remarkably low lethality.

Good for the element of surprise; better than the net launching arrows or the soporific gas arrows, or so Tony claimed. The archer had protested at the time –If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it yadda yadda yadda – but somehow, his quiver had been tempered with right before the mission. This meant he was now stuck with the billionaire’s toys making for half of his arrowheads, something Clint sworn to make the older man pay for once this little camping ordeal was over.

 

Speaking of which; once the man was satisfied with his assessment of the area, he went back to facing the thuja trunk, crouching with an angle so he could have a direct line of sight on the checkpoint without being too visible from this distance.  
Minutes turned to hours, the sun went up to his highest, and yet nothing came to the cracked road and the rusty bridge. As sharp as always, Clint still stood watch on this piece of deserted land extending below the cliff at his feet. 

However, he was finding it harder to ignore a few of the little distractions he managed to push away until now: for one the chatter on S.H.I.EL.D’s frequency telling him how pissed everyone was at Tony for being so late; the bitchy tone of a few scientists an annoying buzz that managed to pierce through the never ending roar of the cascade. Then the fact the earpiece which picked said frequency held awkwardly over his hearing aids –his custom radio needed some repairs– and was starting to pinch his right ear.  
Most of all a muscle in his back, still sore from a previous training session with Natasha, really didn’t agree with squatting as he was for so long. Trying to shift his weight only made him aware of the fact thuja bark has a texture far from adherent. 

 

Time and all those little details and thoughts made so he absolutely didn’t expect a large and dark mass to crash right behind him, the thump on the ground resonating right up to the trunk Clint was hunched on. Startled, the adrenaline shooting through his body like an electric shock, the archer turned around fast enough to further bruise his back, his bow at the ready following his move.  
His heart nearly jumped out of his chest when the figure a few feet from him turned out to be very brown, very hairy, and very bear-like. The thing let out a bizarre yet booming roar and the man didn’t take more time to ponder on his situation: he was cornered, the beast was right in his face… but he wasn’t unarmed.

It was much more of a reflex anyway: first thing he knew, the usually rapid flow of time seemed to turn into a mushy sludge, and the scene unravelled before his eyes like an ironically comical movie slow motion in which he had the most absurd role.  
He had already released the arrow he had kept drawn straight at the hairy beast’s throat, and he could already see it cutting through air toward its target when he realised two things.  
First of all, the bear might not be so much of a bear after all as he noticed at the edge of his sight two red very human legs sticking out of the hairy mass. Second of all, he had just used one of Tony’s arrows.

The dumb *shockwave* arrows.

He shot a shockwave arrow at a target less than 6 feet away.

That was literally way too close for comfort.

 

He barely had time to mouth a heartfelt « Oh shit! ».  
He only registered the red figure clad with brown fur flying backward half a second before he felt as if his entire body was slammed by an invisible 18-wheeler.  
The shockwave, of course… Fuck Tony.

He felt pushed back harshly. He sensed his feet leaving the ground, then immediately felt his body smashing hard against the thuja behind him. And yet, even with the impact bad enough to knock the wind out of his lungs and shoot a stabbing pain in his shoulder, the trunk was not sufficient to completely break his momentum.  
The wet bark scraped against his arm, his boots slipped, and then there wasn’t anything left to keep him on his perch.

He was falling over the cliff back first. 

He hardly heard the strangled yelp of horror that escaped his own lips: the crash of the waterfall was deafening. So was the hammering of his wildly beating heart.

His hand was still clasped tightly around his bow, but there wasn’t enough time to use a grappling arrow.

 

And then he connected to the ground. Hard.  
He thought he felt himself bouncing, and then rolling in a mad tumble. His arms might have shot out to try to break his fall or halt the plummeting, but he couldn’t tell if he did actually move a limb; pain being the only signals sent back to his brain.

There was dirt and blood in his mouth. He couldn’t see anything.

He suddenly slowed down, only to hit obstacles definitively sharper and harder than the ground he fell on, and be instantaneously engulfed in something ice cold.

Water, his last fleeting thoughts came to the conclusion as he lost his final grip on consciousness. 

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was hazy; everything was hazy, as if his body was submerged in nothingness, in the abyss of a still ink black lake in a still ink black night.  
Except he couldn’t feel the water; only a distant tightness, a vague pressure in his chest. Or was it around his chest, like a taut band circling his torso? It was hard to tell where his body started and where it ended or if anything else existed in this ageless darkness.

He wanted to sink back into the ink and escape the grip of whatever seemed to slowly crush him, but it was too late; he had already started to surface. 

Out of oblivion came the awareness of more of his own body parts as the same pressure he felt around his chest seemed to spread to one of his shoulders, to his back, and then his head. He became aware the air was dry and cold, the back of his throat felt raw, and breathing was laboured.

He couldn’t hear himself breathing, no matter how much of a struggle it seemed to be: it was just this eerie artificial silence –was there still water left in his ears? 

The pressure on his body slowly but surely turned to discomfort, and then, becoming sharper with each heartbeat, turned to a distinctive throbbing.  
Dulled pain, Clint instinctively knew.  
This was something his oddly vacant mind could still relate to. The hard truth was this deduction was simply out of habit; the result of repeating a process over and over again. 

Regaining consciousness after being beaten to a pulp, some of the words came to him.

But the pain wasn’t particularly sharp and he felt disconnected from his own body as if his impulses took extra minutes to travel back and forth through his nervous system.  
That meant drugs. Sedatives.  
Painkillers obviously; something else he knew out of habit. 

There wasn’t the firm icy cement floor of a cell to uncomfortably lie on; he was on a mattress. And the smells that pierced through the tenacious fog in his mind were not musty, damp, or literally the stench of old piss, but were rather chemical and sterile, like bleach and disinfectant. His throat was dry and something was on his face and in his nose, bothering him: a nasal cannula, he knew. 

Hospital then.  
Had he been rescued?

… Had there been others in harm’s way then?

The thought had the same effect as being tased, startling Clint much faster out of his haze. He twitched muscles and limbs that felt like lead, and struggled to open his eyes that felt glued shut, causing dulled pain to shoot all across his body.  
A headache swiftly started drilling into his skull and the archer froze, holding his breath. If he had gasped, he couldn’t hear it.

 

Something warm and firm and yet soft and cautious brushed against his left arm: a hand, someone friendly. The touch was encouraging, silently eliciting him to come back to the land of the livings, telling him he wasn’t alone in this room.  
So somebody heard him. 

Clint pushed harder to finally gather the strength to do the simple act of opening his eyes.  
He was resigned to feel his headache cruelly spike –a headache so bad even under the good stuff means light sensitivity; he knew the drill– but the light wasn’t the stab in the brain he expected.  
Somebody had dimmed the lights.

Talk about being thankful for the small things.

A pale blotch with a bright scarlet halo moved over him in front of the light, casting an ever more appreciated shadow. It was a face, someone looking down on him, and he’d recognize that blurred figure anywhere.

“Natasha…” He stated. 

Or knew he stated; he couldn’t hear his voice still. His mind was far from being clear at the moment, but it had cleared enough for him to now understand the silence which first seemed uncanny to him.  
He had probably lost his hearing aids, again.

“Is everybody alright?” he asked to the blur above him, hoping he was not slurring too much. 

But who was he kidding.

The hand on his arm gave a squeeze and the woman nodded. If he squinted hard, he could see a slight smirk stretching the corner of her mouth.  
The colour of her hair and the aureole it made with the light overhead shining through hurt his eyes.

“Good.” He sighed.

God, his chest felt squashed, even with the drugs flooding his vein through the IV line he knew was sticking out from somewhere.  
Clint meant to comment on that, but motion caught his attention. Natasha was now holding something out to him. He recognized the small object as one of his other pair of hearing aids, the ones that were being repaired earlier this week. Communicating would sure be easier if he could hear after all, especially when what was most certainly a concussion caused him to have the whole blurred vision and double vision package. It was obviously keeping him from reading lips well enough to understand anything yet.

He started to reach for it with his right hand, but his fingers barely moved from where it rested on his stomach. His whole arm was immobilised tightly in place, complete with a sling. But this was nothing compared to the crushing pain that shot through his shoulder, his back, chest and entire arm, all on the right side, when he only tried moving.  
Drugs or not, Clint was floored by the unsuspected onslaught: he froze and gasped as his vision greyed, unable to even think.

He had no idea how long it took, but when he was finally able to get the pain back under control, he realised he had been holding his breath and had shut his eyes.  
Natasha’s hand on his left arm –the pain explained why she wouldn’t touch his right one- gave another squeeze before letting go, only to grab his wrist.

The archer opened his eyes to watch as she put the hearing aids in his palm and guided up his good hand to the side of his face. Understanding what she was doing, he thanked her, his smile both marked with embarrassment and the remnant of his pain –at least reduced back to an unpleasant throbbing instead of a furiously burning ache. 

Mental note: right arm is a no go for now, and he wished someone had warned him before he had to learn the hard way.  
But, oh well, it could have been worse, and the pain meds were starting to be useful again.

 

The archer fumbled a moment with the object in his hand, his fingers feeling sluggish and useless, but he lastly managed to adjust the one aid he was handed to his ear and turn it on. The sounds of the room suddenly all came back to him like emerging from underwater, this time closer to the actual sensory experience than it had been when he woke up.  
The noises made his headache spike, but a familiar voice managed to distract him from the worse of it:

“Is this better?” Natasha asked as she released the archer’s hand.

“Yeah. Thanks again” He sighed in relief and let his left arm flop back on the bed, keeping himself from cringing too obviously when the motion jarred half of his injured parts.

“It can only get better you know: I’m the one who developed and built the thing after all…” A familiar voice piped in from the back of the room, too loud for Clint.

Tony. 

Who let this guy in anyway?

Hawkeye didn’t have to glance his way to know who just came in –not that he wanted to move his head or even his eyes too much with the headache he had and all.

 

“I wish I didn’t have it then; if that would have kept me from having to listen to you…” the injured man groaned.

Natasha moved away from his bed and took a seat on a chair pulled close –had she been waiting by his side for him to wake up? – yet, before her face became less visible, the man caught a glimpse of an amused smile on her lips.

“Oh, okay, so you’ve decided to join the club and blame me for what happened too?” Tony picked on, moving closer as if he had been invited to.

“What *did* happen anyway?” Clint asked, now frowning as he realised he was missing a few puzzle pieces on why he was here in the first place.

“Do you know where you are?” Natasha took over.

Clint rubbed his eyes: “Hum, definitively one of S.H.I.E.L.D’s many secret infirmaries… And my brain’s fine; I know who I am, I know who you are, and I guess today’s still Thursday. It’s just… a bit *fuzzy* that’s all.”

Natasha was unimpressed: “If you are so well, then what’s the last thing you remember?”

The archer pondered on that: he had been on a mission, evidently.  
He remembered the smell of a forest not long after the rain, the trees. Natasha hadn’t been there with him. Tony was there though, or more like he had to be but wasn’t. He remembered the location of the checkpoint, and watching it from a high vantage point. The sound of a lot of water flowing by him…  
This singular thought was what made sense of his vague memories, and then everything came back to him at once.

“Shit!” Clint opened his eyes wide: “Stark’s piece of junk pushed me off a cliff!” he exclaimed, at the crossroad between astonishment, dismay, outrage, and resentment.

“It’s your own fault, birdbrain! You were not using it right: the shockwave arrows were not meant to do all the thinking for you, obviously! Plus if you-” An offended Tony started to reply, only to be cut short by the only woman in the room.

“It was Deadpool.” 

“What?!” Now Clint was lost.

“I wanted to be the one breaking the news to him!” Stark whined, but was immediately ignored.

“At the waterfall" The Widow explained "he must have been hired to salvage what was left in the lab. He found you first apparently.”

“No it wasn’t, it was…” The archer started to protest, but images of the human legs clad in red sticking out of the brown beast’s fur came to his mind: “Son of a bitch! It *was* him!”

Tony gladly took over: “He was wearing a costume. Bear costume. When I first saw him leaning over you from the distance, I thought it was a caveman wearing a cave bear fur making out with his cave lady!”

“What are you talking about?!”  
“He saved you, Birdie! Kept you from drowning in that river. He got you out of the water and pulled you to the side of the road!” The billionaire was enjoying himself way too much.

“You’re kidding me!”

“Absolutely not! That’s what’s making it even better!” The Iron Man chuckled “We were just pulling onto the little bridge when one of Nick’s guard dogs spotted you two frolicking in the grass on the other bank. My security detail got very nervous and started pointing their guns at your buddy there. And guess what? He just shouted back that they were not fun and threw one of my arrows at the head of the convoy.  
My arrows; they’re working like a charm when used right so you know how that went… Buuut alas your prince charming got away in the commotion ad left you behind, you poor thing!”

 

The archer let out a long groan of exasperation: maybe this story was hard to believe, but he knew that it was likely true anyway seeing how the whole world was so keen on torturing him.  
Plus, he didn’t have much strength left to object and argue further with Stark at the moment: pushing the billionaire into another rant wouldn’t do any good to his current headache.

This reminded of his whole “hit at close range with a shockwave, rammed into a tree, and threw off a cliff” tribulation and his attention quickly turned to the various discomforts and pains coursing through his battered body. With the drugs making it harder to precisely assess the damages, he only knew of a few areas he had to carefully avoid to jolt; his brain and entire right arm for a start.  
He briefly tried to fight the ache and dizziness in an effort to lift his head and look at himself –he was wearing a hospital gown; at least he wasn’t naked under the thin sheet– but quickly gave up.

Clint carefully laid his head back on his pillow, a bit embarrassed now that he remembered there were still people in his room.

“Aside from the humiliation, how bad is it?” He asked while rubbing his eyes again, trying hard not to sound too pathetic. 

 

The archer immediately regretted not shooing the other man away before asking as his question had Tony chuckling like he had just been told some hysterical joke.

“Just wait a minute…” the older man winked at Clint before turning around and striding hurriedly toward the door  
“Widow, please don’t tell him everything just yet!” Stark nearly begged her just as he was crossing the threshold. 

She simply motioned for Tony to go, and the older man obliged with a mischievous grin splitting his face.

Clint’s fuzzy brain left him too confused by the scene to react, but he did frown at Natasha, hesitation visible on his drawn features. The woman waved away his silent question with a slight shrug and somehow brought the subject back to the initial concern: 

“It’s a good thing you didn’t fall directly into the river: it was shallow at this level; you would have cracked your thick skull open on a rock.” She began. 

“Lucky me.” he scoffed.

“But since you managed to hit the softer ground of the incline first, the doctors think you might survive.” She concluded with a dash of mockery.

“Don’t make me laugh” he croaked before shutting his eyes tightly once again “what’s the rundown?”

“You had worse. This time it’s: one cracked rib; two bruised ribs; deep muscle contusions over the right scapula; shoulder and elbow subluxation; abrasions; some more bruises, and of course a concussion. They’re also keeping an eye on your oxygen levels since you nearly drowned, but it’s more of a formality at this point.” Her tone was as disinterested as if she was reading a grocery list.

Clint flinched.

“Yeah, I had worse… But it doesn’t make this suck less…” He grumbled half to himself.

Although his mind wasn’t entirely set on the long road to recovery: there was something Natasha wasn’t telling him.  
That wasn’t so much the secret that caught his attention, but rather the fact she made barely any effort in hiding that she had intel she wasn’t sharing. For that the archer knew her well enough to tell that, if she truly wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to read anything from her at all.

Though the archer couldn’t ponder on the matter much longer as he heard fast paced footsteps approaching: seconds later, Stark was entering the room, beaming with a joy that meant bad news for him.  
The man slid through and made his way to Clint’s bed, holding something in his hands the injured man first mistook for a tablet of some kind. However he realised it was truly a mirror just as the billionaire shoved the object in Clint’s good hand.

“What do you want with…?” The archer started to complain, but stopped mid-sentence as he caught a glimpse of his own reflection.

There were what seemed to be dark blotches on his face, and he first thought they were simply more bruises from the abuses he endured previously. He though realized with a mix of horror and confusion the marks had a pattern and looked like drawings more than contusions.

Bear paws. Goddamn stylised paw prints, straight out cheesy faux-Native American symbolism.  
A small black print on his forehead above his right eye and a large one on his left cheek.

“What the hell?!” he let out, baffled.

He dropped the mirror on his laps to rub frantically at the marks with his good hand, then picked it back up to look again, but it was in vain; the bear paws were still clearly visible and not even remotely smudged.

A sound caught his attention –was somebody chocking?- and the archer tore his eyes away from his reflection to find the source. He was greeted by the sight of Tony fighting hard not to guffaw out loud; a hand clasped on his mouth, tears in his eyes and all. And of course, Stark was holding his cell phone up, recording Clint’s reaction, as if the pain and humiliation wasn’t enough already.  
Even Black Widow was smiling –and that explained her bad poker face from earlier: she had been waiting for this very moment all along.

“Oh this is gold!” Stark sniggered at Hawkeye’s part offended part death glare. “Don't get your panties in a bunch; they’re only temporary tattoos! There was plenty of water around to apply them on, but don’t ask me where Deadpool got them all from…” He finally went on to explain.

Mischievous, Natasha felt the need to add: “The paramedics said they saw a few more when they were cutting your shirt away…”

As if on cue, Clint fumbled and tugged on the collar of his hospital gown to peek at his chest as careful not to jar his aching shoulder in the process as the drugs allowed him to be.  
The thick bandages binding most of his chest were a sight to behold, but it wasn’t enough to hide what his saviour had kindly left behind. There were more of these bear paw print temporary tattoos on his pectorals for one, along with a message in bold yet fancy handwritten letters left with what seemed to be indelible black ink.

“*Deadpool is my Teddy Bear*?!” The archer read out loud, both disgusted and outraged.

Tony’s laughter was doing nothing to help ease Clint’s headache, and the injured man, too exhausted and miserable to bother objecting anymore, fell back on the mattress with an indignant and pained grunt. He grabbed the thin blanket and brought it up over his head in an attempt he knew vain to cut himself from this cruel world.

“Hold on, it’s not all!” Tony struggled to say in his hilarity: “You wanna know who resurrected you after you nearly drowned?”

“No! No, I really don’t want to at this point…” Clint grumbled tiredly from under the sheet.

“Why do you think they call him Merc with a Mouth?”

“Oh god *no*!” The nausea wasn’t only caused by the concussion anymore.

“I’m sure he did it on purpose, or at least he did so when he went for round two as we were closing by…” Tony went on “I have a video of Pooh Bear in action if you want to check it out…”

“Just let me die!”

The miserable words came from under the sheet, and those were the only words Hawkeye spoke to Iron Man for many days.  
Nobody was going to let Clint live it down now anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missing scenes are fun fun fun!

Not long after S.H.I.E.L.D’s raid on their not so secret lab, the remaining members of the A.I.M. cell involved received what seemed to be the first good news in a very long time.  
Yes, they did lose more than half of their colleagues, and yes some of the captives most likely released sensitive intel, but there was still a flicker of hope for the last free terrorists. As a matter of fact, the various sensors which rigged every hatch leading to their most precious lab on site were still transmitting; this meant their underground facilities had not been breached in yet. Therefore there was a slight chance they could get their researches back before Fury’s men reached the lab and seized whatever was left.

The cell members had managed to gather scraps and funds, but not enough equipment nor enough trained agents to launch an assault to reclaim the lost ground. To do so would have required more time along with administrative approval, something that was painstakingly difficult to get for smaller A.I.M cells. They mostly lacked the time factor as they knew S.HI.E.L.D. could find out about the underground hidden rooms any minute now.  
Thus the local supervisors had to hire someone who could do the job and fast, or else the entire branch would face the threat of managerial punishment for this disgraceful failure.

“Bureaucracy is not a Goody-Two-Shoes only club.” Deadpool had professed on the phone, nodding knowingly although his A.I.M interlocutors could not see him.

For the mercenary was the leading candidate; his methods possibly dubious, but his efficiency was decent enough for such a restrictive timeframe. Above all, they needed someone crazy enough to run into the lion’s den and face whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. had guarding the place.  
At this point, the last terrorists of the local branch were desperate enough not only to contact the man, but also to docilely swallow every ounce of insanity Deadpool would pour onto them from his end of the conference call: 

“You know why I’m going to take this job?” the masked merc asked ever the phone “Not because of the pay, no; the pay is just… well I’m obviously not getting paid the millions I deserve!”

“I… I don’t understand…” the branch manager stammered yet was promptly ignored.

“Nah, not the pay, nope… The job itself though; it’s like how the little-small-wee bear’s bed and chair and porridge were to Goldilocks. Neither too boring nor too interesting, but just right! ” the mercenary beamed then went on: “My man Fury won’t *only* send some low-level S.H.I.E.L.D agents, but he won’t bother sending the Big Guns for so little…  
And, guys; I’m pulling some maps online as we speak –I’m just so tech savvy– so I know I can only be right. See: there’s a lot of ground to cover *and* the terrain calls for some mighty fine bird perches with panoramic views: that can only mean one thing!”

“…Which is?”

“They’ll send my future best friend to watch the perimeter, d’uh!” Deadpool’s voice turned to a conniving whisper over the phone: “They’re sending Hawkeye! He sees better from a distance!”

“Oh. Right. So, hum… does that mean we have an agreement, sir?” the A.I.M agent hesitated.

“Well you can go ahead a wire me as much as you want; I’m going there one way or another anyway! Wild horses couldn’t drag us away from our destiny!”

On that final proclamation, the mercenary ended the conversation and hanged up the payphone with more force than necessary, giggling in anticipation.  
“This will be so much fun!” He said to himself, readjusting his new favourite bear-like head-gear over his usual mask.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And this is part why Deadpool later found himself making his way through impenetrable vegetation, jumping over downed trees and tearing through bushes while humming suspenseful movie themes.  
He was leaving a trail a blind man could spot from a mile, but that was the least of his concerns, if he had any concern at all. The merc was rather enthralled by a very subtle path he came across after hours of roaming the forest under the cover of the thickest trees: someone trained for stealth had used the path not long before him. Since it seemed to be heading uphill and toward the general location of the waterfalls, Deadpool knew right away he had found what he had been looking for.  
Hawkeye had hiked this way.

“Is he a natural or what?” the man said out loud with emotion, wiping an imaginary tear from where his eyes were under his mask.

 

Using his new-found make-believe bear senses to track the archer, he followed the trail to the upstream river bed.

“I’m *not* making this up! The bear senses I mean: it’s a real spiritual connection!” Deadpool rectified indignantly.  
“You wouldn’t understand.” He added out loud just as he passed unripen yet mouth-watering and bear-friendly wild raspberries.

 

It was pass noon when he finally reached the cascade, and it didn’t take long for him to find who he trekked up here for in the first place. Not that Hawkeye was standing in plain sight, but the mercenary knew which signs to look for and had “A good feeling about this”, as he proclaimed.

He nonchalantly approached the break in the vegetation that lead to the cliff side, but noticed soon enough the archer didn’t seem to register his very presence. The Avenger kept his unwavering gaze on the landscape downhill and his bow at the ready, his back turned to the newcomer.

“He can’t hear me, can’t he?” Deadpool pointed out, turning to an invisible audience. “Of course he can’t; how insensitive of me! He’s the Bizarro World Daredevil after all…”

But it didn’t faze the mercenary and he even saw in this situation the opportunity for a well-earned grand entrance; it’s not every day one gets to sneak up on an Avenger. Most of all, it was the perfect occasion to appear in all his bear glory and inspire the awe the great wild beast deserved. Entrancing a future recruit could be achieved in any way possible, or so Deadpool’s various internal voices agreed on.  
Utter terror was one of the ways.

He proudly adjusted the bear skin rug he was wearing: the fur of the front legs tied together and hanging like a shawl on his chest, the rest of it floating on his back while the neck and stuffed grizzly head formed a makeshift hood.

“Not a simple rug; a magnificent chieftain cloak.” the mercenary scolded as he pulled the fur closer to his body to try and hide most of his red and black suit.

He readied himself and decided that, if his mightiest roar wasn’t loud enough to catch Hawkeye’s attention, stomping heavily on the plateau and tree supporting the archer might do the trick.  
It is to note that, somehow, the madman saw absolutely nothing flawed with his plan.

 

So it was exactly how Deadpool proceeded…  
And it turned out his bear impression worked perhaps a bit too well.

Hawkeye jumped and twisted and crouched like a cat that had just been woken up by the sound of a vacuum cleaner; eyes like Ping-Pong balls; blood draining from his face at a disconcerting speed.

 

Deadpool would have cackled at that profoundly hilarious sight, and he had frankly expected getting impaled by a few arrows in return so he believed his fun wouldn’t be spoiled by regrets.  
However, the single blunt arrow that struck his throat without digging into his flesh had another effect he truly hadn’t anticipated.

It was like an explosion, only much quieter… with no ball of flames… and with much less deadly shrapnel…  
So not an actual explosion then.

 

The shockwave lifted Deapool from the ground, sending him in a mad tumble back away from the ledge and back into the foliage.  
He only stopped rolling 9 feet away as he crashed head first against a rotten stump, sending it flying to pieces and wood chips.

The mercenary twisted and struggled back to his feet: he would have thought the situation much more entertaining if he wasn’t suddenly reminded of a horrified yelp he heard as he was projected by the shockwave.

“It wasn’t me; the speech balloon wasn’t yellow… So what was it?” the madman pondered out loud, squinting in concentration.

 

And then it hit him: his soon to be best-buddy Hawkeye wasn’t where he was last seen, which had been awfully close to a sheer vertical drop...  
Well crap.

"I’m the worst Mamma Bear there is!" Deadpool wailed as he hurried to the edge.

He hanged onto a branch, leaned forward, and frantically scanned the ground below him for the archer, expecting to find his broken body shattered somewhere on the rocky riverbed.  
To his amazement, there wasn’t any brain jam and Avenger bloody pulp spread everywhere at his feet down the cliff; the rocks were not as directly below the drop as he supposed they’d be.  
But he immediately spotted a dark form further on his right, in the river itself. It was a body and, although the plunge pool wasn’t very deep close to the bank, the man was unmoving, resting half afloat yet face down in the cold water.

“I’ve drowned people in shallower puddles” Deadpool exposed the seriousness of the situation to his invisible audience. 

“Mamma Bear gotta save her cub; how else is-she going to start a clan anyhow! Should-I jump? Should-I jump? W.-W.-H.-D.; What Would Hawkeye Do?... Uh, well he jumped. Maybe not so great idea… I *could* jump, but little-small-wee bear might end up dead or brain damaged by the time I’m done healing broken legs… I have to find another way down!” He voiced his mental debate and, when he reached a conclusion, he sprinted away from the edge of the cliff.

He backtracked on the path from earlier and jogged until he noticed what seemed to be a slope leading away from the river, steep but not as much as the cliff itself was. The terrain was nevertheless obstructed by more shrubs, the humus littered with more pointy rocks and branches.  
Not the kind of man to shy away from this reckless new path, Deadpool half ran half skid and stumbled down, trampling some of the obstacles, jumping over some of the others, and nearly tripping in the process each and every time.

“At least my superb cowl made it through!” the mercenary noted with pride as he reached the bottom of the slope.  
He didn’t stop there and kept on with his wild race into the forest, orienting himself with the sound of the waterfall until he managed to locate the river and run pass the tree line.  
The merc quickly found the archer; the unconscious man had been dragged further away by the current, his body now pressed against a cluster of rocks and driftwood.

Had the Avenger been submerged the entire time?

“That’s what I’m going to find out in a jiffy! And this will be just like the great Kodiak bear salmon fishing…” Deadpool rambled to himself as he scrambled for the riverbed and started crossing the mid-thigh high water with silly hindered strides.

As he was nearing the archer still form, he came across an object caught on the decaying vegetal debris. It was Hawkeye’s quiver; the thing itself waterlogged and partly smashed in, most of the arrows gone.  
The bow had probably been hauled away by the current; he tried not to think too much about it and rather comfort himself in the fact he still had something of significance to steal.

“A fine souvenirs. Might not sell so well on eBay broken as it is though…” the mercenary commented.  
In one hand he grabbed the quiver while with the other he reached for the archer’s shoulder.

The madman rolled the unconscious one over on his back, pulling the man’s head out of the water in the process, and then started dragging him toward the riverbank. While on the move and as he kept pulling the dead weight by the front of its shirt, he shouldered the broken down quiver and studied its rightful owner with curiosity.

“He’s not moving alright…” he reflected, taking in how pale the other was.

To put it simply, Hawkeye was way too motionless and comatose for the mercenary’s taste; the later stopped in his track in the middle of his hike back out of the water and prompted the unconscious man up a little to get a better look.  
There was blood on his scalp; the amount of haemoglobin that hadn’t been washed away just enough to tint the short hair red around the hairline. His eyes were evidently closed, but his lips were slightly parted now.

“And they look blue-ish… Does that look blue to anyone? Or purple maybe?... Nah; definitively blue-ish.” Deapool said out loud, bringing his face so close the nose of his stuffed bear hood brushed against the archer’s forehead.  
Hawkeye would have felt noticeably uncomfortable if he had been aware at all, but that the mercenary didn’t know.  
Or would rather ignore the issue, if not enjoy making others uncomfortable by sticking close enough for them to be able to feel each other’s breath.

That is if the other in question did breathe. 

“Yep, the lips are blue-ish. I doubt it’s lipstick… Uh. Well he’s not breathing, so that explains it.”

Deadpool decided to do something about this new issue: he gripped the man’s “tactical sleeveless vest” firmly with both hands, and promptly started shaking him energetically. Water splashed and soaked further both men, and the madman’s feigned grunts of effort mixed with the roar of the waterfall.  
The abuse made the agent’s head bob limply against his chest and shoulders, his arms flopping around a little, but it wasn’t truly doing any good.

“So you tell me…” The merc grumbled, switching to slapping Hawkeye’s face as his new resurrection method, but not to avail. 

“Aw! I’ll have to actually try to do it right! I can’t do CPR; bears don’t know CPR! A single chest compression with their mighty bear paws and the dead guy spits out internal organs like confetti!” He whined as he pressed two fingers on the archer’s neck to feel for a pulse. 

“Drum roll…”

Fortunately, the injured man’s heart was still beating; the pulse was weak, barely noticeable, but it was there.  
Only the situation was dire and could still take a turn for the worse if no action was taken.

Deadpool made a show of taking a deep and emotional shuddering breath before repositioning himself behind the unconscious man. He held him sitting up in a fashion that wasn’t much unlike a wrestling chokehold, and turned to his invisible viewers.

“Time for the kiss of life, kids!… Today, we do it the Spiderman way, featuring the ever talented and lively Hawkeye as Mary Jane Watson!”

On cue, Deadpool leaned over the Avenger’s form so his own face was upside down before the archer’s, as if he was hanging head down above him. He slowly lifted his mask so to reveal nothing more than his scarred and mangled chin and mouth, pinched Hawkeye’s nose…  
And then went on to perform the most bizarre mouth to mouth resuscitation attempt in modern history.

“Come one! Don’t you die on me!” The mercenary would sporadically and melodramatically screech at the injured man between upside down insufflations.

He wished he had a spare hand to record the scene.  
“And maybe use the footage to audition for Broadway, who knows!” Deadpool beamed.

 

He had to force air into the archer’s lungs a few more times before anything happened. And when it did, Hawkeye feebly coughed out some of the water he had swallowed and struggled to breathe on his own.  
Although, other than that, he didn’t stir nor showed any sign of waking up. He was so out of it he would have swallowed the water back if he had been flat on his back instead of inelegantly held sitting against the mercenary’s legs, half submerged in the river.

“HE LIVES!” Deadpool exclaimed as he straightened up and lifted the still body in a bone crushing hug, splashing around and shaking his new buddy like a ragdoll in his excitement.

But his so-called excitement fell short as he considered his chew toy’s utter lack of reaction.

“Little-small-wee bear, really? No wakey wakey? Just how brain damaged can you get? Can’t you just wear a helmet from time to time?” He scolded his victim, giving another shake for good measure. 

 

This didn’t work any better so he shrugged and carried the other man in this awkward embrace; treading and trotting through the river all the way back to dry land.

 

“You could at least thank me, you ungrateful little cub!” The madman complained while unceremoniously dropping the unmoving body on its stomach on the grass, away from the river bank.

They were much closer to the cracked road and the rusty bridge now, only on the other side of the stream.  
Hands on hips, the Canadian took a moment to take in the sounds of the forest and the a tad more distant crash of the waterfall. Abandoned power station or not, there were far worse places to die at. In fact, this area could have been perfect for a cozy little bucolic cottage away from civilisation.  
Away from anything in fact. 

“Such a great crowd… It’s a good thing I’m not doing this for fame and fortune” Deadpool ironized then readjusted the bear skin on his back “Oh well; time for art and craft…”

He walked back to the river, removed a glove and drenched it in the water. He made his way back to the unconscious man and turned the man over on his back with the tip of his boot. He then removed a small pile of temporary tattoo papers from one of his many belt pouches, kicked away a limp and heavily bruised arm –it was in the way- and proceeded to sit side-saddle on Hawkeye’s torso.

Using his soaked glove and a savoir-faire straight out of the 90’s, Deadpool artfully applied the biggest and prettiest temporary tattoos he owned on his new friend’s face and bruised chest, preparing Hawkeye for a soon-to-be Bear Spirit shamanic initiation.

“About that: I’m still working on a few details for the ceremony… And I guess we’ll have to discuss dates and send invites when sleepyhead will snap out of it…” The merc remarked as he finally signed his masterpiece with a black permanent marker “But it’s going to happen, I’m confident. I’d rather not talk about it just yet though. I wouldn’t want to come up with the finest explanation there is only to have to repeat it all when *mister* will be awake.” 

Deadpool didn’t rant further but rather frowned under his mask as a detail caught his fleeting attention: Hawkeye’s lips were cyanosed again.

“I thought I fixed that…” the mercenary mused, then slapped himself in the forehead: “Oh right! Sitting on drowned people’s chest is *not* cool!”

He scrambled to his feet and leaned over the archer.

“Come on man; let’s not turn this into a sequel!” Deadpool grumbled, kneeling by the body and getting ready to perform mouth to mouth again nevertheless. “Or worse: a *reboot*…” he scrunched his nose in disgust. 

 

Luckily, having the mercenary remove his weight from the other man’s ribs proved to be enough to restore his breathing.  
The madman didn’t budge just yet however: he stayed there on his knees, squinting distrustfully at the other as if he expected him to expire or start seizing any second now. He blew air on his face for good measure.

He poked him too, and flicked one of his ears a few times. 

His victim wouldn’t stir in any case though.

 

The noise of multiple car engines pierced through the ambient sounds of nature.  
Soon, Deadpool could not ignore it anymore as it was growing closer at a peculiar speed.  
“Someone’s in a hurry” 

He tore his eyes away from the man sprawled before him to glare at a line of heavy black SUVs that had appeared on the stretch of road at a distance. It was clear the vehicles were on their way to what remained of A.I.M.’s labs since there wasn’t anything else worth the ride in the neighbourhood.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. already?! Aw: we barely had any time to catch up!” Deadpool whined.

He wasn’t wrong: at this rate, the SUVs would reach the two men in no time and, from their location on the river bank, chances were they were going to be spotted long before.

“They just won’t let any other kid play with their toys, this is *so* selfish! I just wanted a minute with the guy, is it too much to ask? And now they’re going to shoot at me again; not that I mind the bullets so much, but how are we supposed to have a civilised conversation when it’ll be raining lead?!” The merc addressed indignantly the unmoving form at his knees.

He let out a long exaggerated sigh, patting Hawkeye on the shoulder like he was comforting a brother in misfortune confronted by some cruel injustice: “Bears are so misunderstood!… Also: wow, that feels swollen; did you fall on your arm or something?”

The nut-job pulled the sleeve of his victim’s t-shirt as far as the vest worn over allowed him to, revealing angry bruises encompassing a large surface of the man’s shoulder.

“Hey! They might not want him back if he’s broken! Nothing duck-tape won’t fix, but it’s worth the shot” Deadpool sniggered “Or is it like mamma birds that won’t take back the chick that fell from their nest? If it’s what it takes to get him to join me, I’ll throw the hawk down the cliff myself all over again!” 

 

With the screeching of brakes, the black vehicles came to a halt a few feet from the bridge separating them from the two men. There were already agents pouring out of the SUVs and taking cover behind their bulletproof car doors: orders were barked and a number of weapons of various calibers were by this time aimed at Deadpool.  
It saddened him a little: it marked the fact it was too late to push Hawkeye down anything now.  
It also meant the agents were very likely tempted to try and capture him.

“Man, I had somewhere else I needed to be, and it wasn’t anywhere near their homey high-security secret jails…” he complained to himself before addressing loudly the armed agents: “YOU’RE NOT FUN, PALS!”

 

That was when his mind suddenly remembered the partly broken quiver he had kept all along: some of the remaining arrows could prove quite useful in the planning of his quick escape.

“This is not the end, oh soon to be brother bear. Now is not the time, but fret not: I’ll come back for you.” The Canadian declared solemnly to the archer.

He stood up slowly and removed an arrow from the quiver, ready to take action.

“See you later, alligator.” Deadpool whispered fondly to the Avenger.

To what he replied for the other man, imitating Hawkeye’s own voice:  
“Get stuffed, Teddy Bear!”

 

At this very instant, the madman set his plan in motion by throwing a shockwave arrow at the head of the S.H.I.E.L.D. convoy.

“And the rest is History” he whispered as the arrow set off. 

 

The End… for now

:)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case the foreshadowing wasn't enough: currently working on a second part for this bear-themed short series
> 
> Thanks for reading and sorry for my English
> 
> EDIT: PART 2 IS UP!  
> See my work list, it is easy to find

**Author's Note:**

> Note 1: I put this only at the end since the only thing I have worth something in my fanfic is the little Deadpool surprise. I didn't want to spoil it too fast, so here we go:  
> Work inspired by a great piece called "Backcountry Soundtrack", by author harcourt  
> It's smart and far better than my piece. And, no, I am not getting paid to say that; harcourt doesn't even know me, I'm like a creep or something...  
> Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2204910?view_full_work=true
> 
> Note 2: Truly sorry if I depicted the characters wrong. I tried my best, but my knowledge is limited to the Marvel Cinematic Universe; two Marvel's Avengers cartoons; a few Wikipedia/Wiki pages; a few fanfictions; and screenshots from various comic books featuring Hawkeye... Never read an actual complete comic about these guys.
> 
> Note 3: Also sorry if my English sucks... ESL and all; I'm trying


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